Barbarians!

[Mentos]

"March" should work because it has the same "Always Heal" parameter set on "true" like at "Survivalism III". There should be a heal no matter what action.
I just did a test again by giving "Survivalism III" to Brutes. They also automatically received "Survivalism I" and "II". No healing...

Increasing the horde by upping the maximum spawn number is the only reasonable way I see at moment.
Of course, I could give every Barbarian unit dozen of extra promotions but how would that look like? Do we want them to win the game or play the role as a nuiscance?

They can already plunder well enough City States and AI Civs in the sessions beginning. That already can give a human player a little advantage because of more careful defensive tactics.
According to my test runs so far, they are truely a pest now and can easily pawn sole units, even experienced ones, by their early upgrades and sheer numbers if you are careless.

 

[ronjon]

first time i have tried to mod. so all i do is download, copy into ciV mod folder and automatically working, because i cannot find it in downloaded mod list

 

[Mentos]

Yep, place the *.civ5mod file into the MODS folder and install it in the ingame mod-list menu.

Just make sure you activate Barbarians! before any balance or similar gameplay mods, because otherwise their changes possibly won't affect my new standard units then.

If you notice game stats inconsistency in the Civilopedia under Units between a Civ-unit and a Barb-unit variant, then quit the game and clear the cache folder where also the MODS folder is.
Run the game and reactivate all mods in proper order again, preferably Barbarians! at first.

If there are still inconsistencies left, then you possibly have gameplay mods installed that change units instead of unitclasses. You have to accept this then.
At least Thal's Balance Combined and my Unit-Tweaks mod should work perfectly together with Barbarians!.

 

[ronjon]

worked perfectly, thanks. Now i am ready to get my ass properly kicked

 

[ronjon]

it is perfect. my start-off warrior got attacked by an in camp barb brute, which never has happened before. Maybe now i will not have the whole continent explored before my 2nd city is going. and hopefully a standing army of decent size will be necessary. does the ai respond appropriately in that regard?

 

[Mentos]

Barbarian annoyance all depends how the map layout is and where you, the City States, and other Civs are placed. Of course, the game's difficulty grade plays a big role how the AI can handle it too.
With smaller continents and few neighbors, the chance is somewhat higher to get smashed from two or even three camps at same time.

Especially City States can't handle the barbarian flood, but that's good because you will receive often requests to help them.
The other AI-Civs can have some trouble too at beginning but most of them will recover sooner or later, especially if they have other AI-Civs as neighbors.

I've only noticed it in one long session on fully-equalized Prince diff so far that one AI-Civ got nailed too much by Barbs and couldn't expand further than one city. It was placed on the same large continent like me alone with much space between us. Too bad for it, lucky for me to conquer it later.
It looked much more different on the other large continent where the other 8 AI-Civs were fooling around. I haven't explored all, but as far as I could see there were no Barbarian camps left anymore after 300 turns or so.

Getting rid of camps, especially if you play with Raging Barbarians option, often needs at least 3 units to destroy.
If you are lucky, the Barbs have produced too many ships on a coastal camp. Then they won't get any land-based reinforcements as long as you keep their ships intact.

 

[Ddude97]

Would you allow me to integrate this mod into my scenario?

 

[Mentos]

Sure, I don't think there is much more that could be done with the Barbs anyway.
The only updates that I can think of are compatibility ones with TBC and official patches maybe.

 

[ronjon]

so nothing can be done like in civ4 where barbs could spawn into civs. if not that was very short-sighted by the developers.

by the way, it is about 200bc and the barbs seem to have dried up, and there is lots of unsettled areas. is that according to plan?

 

[Mentos]

I think there is a mod out there where you can play as a Barbarian Civilization. If you are rather looking for that, do a search in the online-browser.

The AI is going for Barb camps if they are close enough to its territories.
I don't really know the procedure how Barbarian camps actually produce their units. I tend to play with Raging Barbarian option which make them hardly ever run out of units.

Like I mentioned in an earlier post here, it's possible that they sometimes produce rather naval than land units if the camp is located at a coast. Then you will hardly see any more land units as long as the ships are still intact.

 

[Stalker0]

Is it possible to get barbarians to start pillaging more?

I've noticed that archer barbarians pillage, while "brute" barbarians just move around and get killed.

 

[Mentos]

The AI of CiV is still a mistery to many and the key for making this game better than good.

Yes, I've found a bunch of settings where you can adjust Barbarian craziness. I'm currently working on something else, but maybe I can do something there without much effort. It takes alot of time to test AI settings.

Here is the list of the vanilla settings in GlobalAIDefines.xml:

Spoiler :

		<Row Name="AI_TACTICAL_RECRUIT_RANGE">
			<Value>10</Value>
		</Row>
		<Row Name="AI_TACTICAL_REPOSITION_RANGE">
			<Value>10</Value>
		</Row>
		<Row Name="AI_TACTICAL_OVERKILL_PERCENT">
			<Value>50</Value>
		</Row>
		<Row Name="AI_TACTICAL_BARBARIAN_RELEASE_VARIATION">
			<Value>15</Value>
		</Row>
		<Row Name="AI_TACTICAL_FLAVOR_DAMPENING_FOR_MOVE_PRIORITIZATION">
			<Value>0.3</Value>
		</Row>
		<Row Name="AI_TACTICAL_MOVE_PRIORITY_RANDOMNESS">
			<Value>6</Value>
		</Row>
		<Row Name="AI_TACTICAL_BARBARIAN_PRIORITY_CAPTURE_CITY">
			<Value>9</Value>
		</Row>
		<Row Name="AI_TACTICAL_BARBARIAN_PRIORITY_DAMAGE_CITY">
			<Value>5</Value>
		</Row>
		<Row Name="AI_TACTICAL_BARBARIAN_PRIORITY_DESTROY_HIGH_UNIT">
			<Value>16</Value>
		</Row>
		<Row Name="AI_TACTICAL_BARBARIAN_PRIORITY_DESTROY_MEDIUM_UNIT">
			<Value>15</Value>
		</Row>
		<Row Name="AI_TACTICAL_BARBARIAN_PRIORITY_DESTROY_LOW_UNIT">
			<Value>14</Value>
		</Row>
		<Row Name="AI_TACTICAL_BARBARIAN_PRIORITY_TO_SAFETY">
			<Value>12</Value>
		</Row>
		<Row Name="AI_TACTICAL_BARBARIAN_PRIORITY_ATTRIT_HIGH_UNIT">
			<Value>10</Value>
		</Row>
		<Row Name="AI_TACTICAL_BARBARIAN_PRIORITY_ATTRIT_MEDIUM_UNIT">
			<Value>7</Value>
		</Row>
		<Row Name="AI_TACTICAL_BARBARIAN_PRIORITY_ATTRIT_LOW_UNIT">
			<Value>6</Value>
		</Row>
		<Row Name="AI_TACTICAL_BARBARIAN_PRIORITY_DESPERATE_ATTACK">
			<Value>0</Value>
		</Row>
		<Row Name="AI_TACTICAL_BARBARIAN_PRIORITY_PILLAGE">
			<Value>8</Value>
		</Row>
		<Row Name="AI_TACTICAL_BARBARIAN_PRIORITY_BLOCKADE_RESOURCE">
			<Value>10</Value>
		</Row>
		<Row Name="AI_TACTICAL_BARBARIAN_PRIORITY_CIVILIAN_ATTACK">
			<Value>13</Value>
		</Row>
		<Row Name="AI_TACTICAL_BARBARIAN_PRIORITY_PASSIVE_MOVE">
			<Value>-1</Value>
		</Row>
		<Row Name="AI_TACTICAL_BARBARIAN_PRIORITY_AGGRESSIVE_MOVE">
			<Value>3</Value>
		</Row>
		<Row Name="AI_TACTICAL_BARBARIAN_PRIORITY_CAMP_DEFENSE">
			<Value>13</Value>
		</Row>
		<Row Name="AI_TACTICAL_BARBARIAN_PRIORITY_ESCORT_CIVILIAN">
			<Value>30</Value>
		</Row>

For more berserking fun, I'm sure reducing "To Safety" and increasing "Pillaging" and especially "Damage/Capture City" is the way to go.
Maybe I could reduce the number of max barbarians again if our Barb friends become more determined. I don't mind if they become more kamikaze this way, do you?


PS: By the way, Barbarians! has been adopted by Thal's Balanced Combined Mod v6.4, so please don't use both mods at same time!

 

[Lachlan]

I have an idea : what about barbarians capturing cities instead of destroy them ?

Why barbarian settler doesn't found a city ? or a camp at least ?

 

[Mentos]

I’d already be happy if the Barbarian nation could gain experience/promotions or at least heal while fortified.

These things, plundering cities, and the civilian capture & return procedures seem to be hardcoded where nothing can be really changed. I can only fiddle with the given behavior a bit according to the AI parameters shown in the post above.

Theoretical, you could just create a new Civilization "Barbarians" that behaves like any other Civ. There is a mod somewhere where you can play with such Civilization. I haven’t tested it yet.
I’m personally fine with their plundering supporting actor role.


I’ve created a new version with an increased aggressiveness. The Barbs should rather seek to plunder now instead of unit hunting/fleeing.
I had no time yet for a long test, but there should be a little difference now with plundering terrain at least.
There were often too many naval and archer units produces/spawned, so I reduced this flavor a bit. Barbarians and City States share one leader, so both are affected.

For the TBC users: you can copy over my Barbarians – Rules.xml file to the appropriate TBC's Barbarians folder if you like to play with my settings, like no xp-cap, more spawns, and the updated plunder lust.
Just don’t activate both mods at same time!

v5
- Barbarian/City State priority to build Naval and Archer units reduced
- Barbarian priority to plunder, and damage and capture cities increased
- Barbarian priority to run for safety set to 0

Download

 

[Mentos]

v6
- Removed all TBC unit buffs for full vanilla compatibility

Download

I removed all the TBC unit buffs because Barbarians! is included there now.
For those, who don't play with Thal's balance mod, you can enjoy Barbarians! fully compatible to vanilla and any other gameplay mods, which don't drastically change unit stats.

You may still copy over my Barbarians - Rules.xml to TBC if you wish. There is no specific unit data there.

 

[Zak Zimmerman]

Hey Mentos, looking forward to trying this MOD out - should give the Aztec civilization a nice culture boost early on.

One idea that sprung to mind while reading through this thread... and please forgive my ignorance of the Civ AI system... but is it possible to have Barbarian units work toward a common goal? Effectively banding together, clans joining clans to create a more effective force? So if 4 Barbarian camps exist on a single continent and there is a weakest player on that continent... the barbarians would most likely raid where the defences were weakest. Just a thought. I'm sure something like this happened to the Roman Empire - they were invaded and pillaged by some uniting of tribes, Huns or Goths or something. As you can see my knowledge of history matches my knowledge of Civ AI code.

 

[Mentos]

I’m not sure but this banding behavior should use the same mechanic like the major AI Civs. I leave those default AI mechanics for others to modify who enjoy experimenting with that, like done in the What Would Gandhi Do? Mod (what is more or less included in TBC mod).

Normally, it all depends where the camps are located and what the barbs have explored. If they noticed a city and improved tiles, they will gladly all go for it. If your city is closest to camps, they should all go for the closest target.

There will be some further AI improvements with the next upcoming official patch. Maybe we are going to see some smarter behavior of barbarians too afterwards.

Following changes could benefit the barbs, especially the last one which is often the doom of them:

• Operational/Tactical AI: Fix to movement/deployment for naval invasion forces.
• Operational/Tactical AI: Improved weighting and selection of muster and target cities for city attack operations.
• Tactical AI: Early game AI tweak to allow occasional sneak attack.
• Tactical AI: Improvements in civilian and embarked units targeting.
• Tactical AI: Improved the logic of how units are chosen for tactical moves so embarked units can now drop into place on land as flanking units, bombard units, etc.
• Tactical AI: Citadels now project danger.
• Tactical AI: Units defending citadels are high priority targets; AI will prioritize trying to take these spaces.
• Tactical AI: AI will now pillage undefended citadels.
• Tactical AI: Be wary when approaching an enemy city; don't close on it if enemy clearly has superiority.

http://forums.2kgames.com/showthread.php?106718-Upcoming-Patch-Notes

 

[SgtCiv]

Thanks a lot for this MOD. IMO it has greatly improved game play. Barbarians with "Raging Barbarians" turned on are almost insane now.
I really like the fact of no limit on gaining EXP for barbarians. The way I look at it is you are still putting that unit at risk, so why shouldn't it gain the EXP. Plus with your MOD the barbs seem to upgrade faster to keep up with the players current Tech LVL.

 

[Mentos]

v7
- Adjusted Barbarian AI priority and removed run for safety change
- Barbarian Archer Ranged Combat reduced from 7 to 6, like Archer
- Barbarian Archer, Spearman, and Swordsman shows up in Civilopedia
- Barbarian units received "Berserker": Restores 5 Hit Points if defeats a Unit. Resting restores slower in friendly territory and not at all in neutral and enemy territory

Download


Shame on me that I haven't discovered this kind of healing for Barbs earlier. Converted Barbarian land units by Bismarck player can still receive healing in neutral/enemy territory by other units with Medic promotion. "Berserker" attribute is lost with upgrade.

Enjoy!

 

[Mentos]

v8
- Barbarian City Attack Modifier increased from 0 to 25 (-25)
- Odds of new Barbarian camp spawning increased

Download


It's hard to teach Barbs to attack cities but an invisible "Club vs Cities (25)" helps!

I think it's a fair without any access to siege weapons. It's like an invisible "Siege" promotion. I seemed to help somehwat during test runs but there still won't be any runs against heavily fortified cities - illiterate Barbs can also count their odds.
If the odds are bad then they will still most likely dance around cities like usually. I wish I could break them of doing that.